Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday April 15, 2012 @02:30PM
from the wipe-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Expanding on previous research providing proof-of-principle that human stem cells can be genetically engineered into HIV-fighting cells, a team of UCLA researchers have now demonstrated that these cells can actually attack HIV-infected cells in a living organism. From the article: 'This most recent study shows that scientists can manipulate stem cells — immature cells that can develop into any type of cell — by implanting genes, turning it into killer T cells which can kill the virus in living mice. While the mouse form of HIV is not exactly the same as it is in humans, the infection and progression closely mimic the virus in humans, and eliminating it is a huge step forward, researchers said.'"

A lot of "we injected him with stem cells!" is rather questionable, something akin to throwing some parts into a car's engine bay if it stops working. Sure, the parts might potentially be useful, but they're not necessarily the right ones, nor will they necessarily end up in the right places. There's certainly potential for future stem-cell based therapies, but most things that you can get done in clinics today are of dubious benefit.

The difference is that you can NEVER throw a lump of ore into your crankcase lube and have it turn into an oil pickup foot, but stem cells seem to self-differentiate into precisely what is needed in an astounding number of cases.

Naturally my analogy was an exaggeration, and like most analogies has its flaws. But I do understand stem cells; I'm currently doing a PhD in biology that relates to stem cells and differentiation. I'm certainly aware of the potential that stem cell-based therapies have, but they ought to be done in a controlled and experimentally-validated manner, not just injecting some cells into humans and hoping they help. They might be beneficial - this needs to be properly studied - but they might do nothing, or even

Clearly this shows that Douglas Adams was correct in his view that mice run this world. We can't cure ourselves, but we spend billions trying to cure mice. Can't you people see what's going on here? They have all the best medicine, we're lagging behind by decades!

Go ahead and try to prevent it. Seems pretty tough to do. Let's, while were at it, prevent people from driving drunk, killing others in rage, and war.

People behave as they will behave. Some get HIV in ways that don't involve sex, although these are rare they are statistically significant.

Sex drives people, and they do it unprotected by condoms and common sense. This is who we are. So is cancer. We know a few things that can easily start it. A few things that can prevent it. A few things that cure it.

People still die from either one. Both need a cure. You're absolutely right: still a major problem to be solved.

Sorry I got to call BS on this. In fact we have been able to reduce Drunk Driving, domestic murders and other problems through education and social planning.

While I am totally in support of scientific research on AIDS and other diseases of mankind (I sure like money spent on that more than on bombs!), We in fact have known everything we need to greatly mitigate or even stop AIDS for years. Most of the countries that have the worst problem in many cases do because their societies didn't catch the clue tra

Part of that same cluetrain is as obvious as the nose on your face. People, even in the town where you live, have sex without condoms.

I live in a college town. Every day of the week, unrelentingly, there are at least a half dozen DUIs. Yet every single student got the same intake video, and most more, about the dangers of drinking and driving.

You can make laws against murder, with hideous penalties, and people will still kill each other. Don't be a fool: the existence of a cluetrain is largely irrelevant as

has it occurred to you that there's many scientists in this world, and most of them work on different things?

if they ALL worked on what you thought was the most worthy cause, there'd be enough redundancy to warrant a big ol rant from you about wasted tax money and why can't they all work on different things...

Then much kudos/applause to the scientists who make this happen. Its about time that the mega-nastiness that is HIV/AIDS becomes curable, and I hope that the disease/virus will hopefully be eradicated completely from this planet some day. (On a slightly sentimental note, it is too bad that thousands of lab-mice/-rats have had to suffer all kinds of pains in various science-labs over the decades, just so that we humans can overcome common diseases. Maybe some lab-rat/lab-mice statues should be errected in a few town squares somewhere, so that we become conscious of where our medical cures come from...)

I wouldn't count on this being a cure. More likely it will just be a better treatment. One of the reasons that HIV is so hard to cure is that it "hides" by infecting cells that then lie dormant for a long time before they start producing new HIV. This means that even if you can kill all of the active HIV virus, new ones will pop up in the apparently cured patient. I would expect that this treatment would have the same drawback.

This treatment is meant to actually kill off the infected cells before they spread more HIV around the body. Combining this with anti-retrovirals might actually be able to wipe all of the HIV out of a patients body. At least it's a step in that direction.

What I find most interesting about this approach, manipulating stem cells to generate many more killer T cells feel a lot like using cancer to fight HIV... Yes, it's a controlled cancer (maybe?)... Think the reversal of http://xkcd.com/938/ [xkcd.com]

I can't really be bothered to RTFA, but depending on their approach you may end up with memory T-cells afterwards, which would mean the immune system would reactivate whenever the virus makes a return. In effect, you would acquire an immunity.

Yes, if you believe the hundreds of Slashdot articles that have claimed a new cure for cancer or HIV, you would expect both diseases to have been eradicated a long time ago. "We've engineered new T-cells that only attack cancer cells" - "We've got a new quantum laser that homes in on cancer cells and leaves all other cells intact" - "We've mutated a species of larvae from the Brazilian Rainforest to eat HIV". But somehow. people are still dying many years after those breakthrough discoveries.

It takes a very long time and a lot of money to go from concept to cure. Generally many, many years of testing and research. Often research that shows promise early on fades out later as it's found to have bad side-effects or be less effective in primates - so not everything pans out. Many times if more than one vector is followed then a good approach may simply be finished too late and another (that isn't better - just as good) is ready sooner.The process takes long with very good reason - all that testing

I know it takes a long time for a cure to be fully tested and available, but many of these articles make it seem like the treatment works and will cure the disease, and then a decade later it turns out not to be the case. This one was about HIV in mice, but not long ago there was one about leucemia in actual humans, 9 out of 10 would be cured or something like that, and I've been reading articles like this for more than a decade. Meanwhile my grandmother died of leucemia and the doctors said there was nothi

That's the nature of science. Nobody pursues a research project if it doesn't have promising results early on. A lot of times those results won't pan out. But over time a few of them will. Those few add up - and that's why modern medicine is so much more advanced than it was even a hundred years ago.

that's why modern medicine is so much more advanced than it was even a hundred years ago.

A hundred years ago? Not even fifty. In the 1960s they used ethyl ether as an anesthetic. Highly falmmable (it's still used as automotive starting fluid) and really NASTY effects. They used it on me when I had a tonsillectomy as a kid, then a couple years later when I broke both my arms. The stuff is a terrible nightmare trip to hell and you wake up sick as a dog.

Well, being vegan I refuse to take flu shots because they're incubated using fertilized chicken eggs. But I'm also pragmatic; if it's a treatment that will save my life, I will take it. That doesn't mean I approve of animal-based research -- I hope we continue to make strides towards moving away from that, it's barbaric -- but I don't live in a utopia.

So yes, I find torturing and maiming animals, and stealing away their free will and often their lives to advance scientific knowledge both 'savagely cruel' and 'primitive'. I'm sure you were trying to be funny, but I find the subject void of humor.

Oh come off it. There are serious scientific doubt if free will is even physically possible. The universe is a predictable system of cause and effect, all matter follows fixed paths through time and space right back to the moment of the big bang. There is absolutely no proof that the matter in our brains behave any differently - indeed free will may well be simply an illusion - what it feels like have a brain despite the fact that what you will end up deciding is always pred

If nothing else the sheer complexity of an advanced brain makes the results so unpredictable that from the outside the results of it existing or not are completely indistinguishable. If free will exists at all - it exists because our brains are so damn complex that despite being predetermined their outcomes are completely unpredictable.

Is there actually such a thing a chaos, or is chaos simply something that's too complex for modern math to formulate? I'm personally skeptical that free will actually exists.

Just about every drug has been tested on animals, Tylenol, Aspirin,... I am not familiar with the FDA approval process for a drug but am fairly sure that animal testing is the only way to gain approval. There might be a way to gain approval to start human testing without animal testing first but I seriously doubt it. If you take any FDA approved drugs then you are using medicine that was tested on animals.

The right to survive. We are fitter than them. My health, and my species health means more to me than some lower creatures life. Same reason for why I eat.

I imagine it would suck for us when some higher alien species starts doing the same thing to us. ( not likely as biologically we'd probably be very different. Maybe using us for their own benefit in some other ways),. But they would have, naturally, every right too. Good thing we are capable of complicated thought, and perhaps could up-rise.

We have to kill millions of rodents to protect ourselves from disease and to secure our food supplies. Even if you decide to live as a vegetarian mice and rats need to be killed e.g. for grain supplies.
It's really absurd to put the focus on the inconsequential number of lab mice.

We should rather make sure that the scientists who use these lab mice to cure and treat horrible diseases get the respect and public backing they deserve.

I hope this treatment becomes soon available to the millions of children and would-be mothers infected with HIV. HIV and other STDs can't really be eradicated however. At most we'll probably end up having better protection against them and their prevalence can be lowered below epidemic levels. We still have to practice safe sex and eradicate ignorance.

Maybe some lab-rat/lab-mice statues should be errected in a few town squares somewhere, so that we become conscious of where our medical cures come from...)

I was rolling my eyes until I got to this point and it suddenly became genius. Here is my proposal: A squishy foam "stress reliever" consisting of a noble mouse on a tiny plinth. You could sell them to Archie McPhee.

I mean the article isn't very clear but I wouldn't think you'd need embryonic stem cells for this. I'd think a hematopoietic stem cell should work since they're the ones that turn into Killer-T cells. Anyway that's what they're transplanting when they give you a bone marrow transplant. Admittedly bone marrow transplant is basically one of the most dangerous medical procedures they can do to you so hopefully this means they'll be able to do a safer version of this transplant. Hey, any medical researchers here to let us know which kind of stem cell they're talking about?

If you dig to the actual abstract and then google the source of HSc's, you'll see they are adult bone marrow cells. Why get a transfusion when they can doctor up your own cells to do this? No babies needed for the treatment, why bother with it if you already have source material from the host to make the new cells and avoid rejection by the body? This is a win-win for all concerned.

Shush, you're applying logic to slashdot's knee-jerk reaction. Don't you know it's a scientific fact that religion is a pox on society and it's every slashdotter's duty to attack it any time an article on stem cells, birth control or evolution is submitted, regardless of applicability?

No, it is not scientific (not experimental) and it's not fact. Give me any one situation in which you say "religion" killed people, and I can point you to three other contributing factors. Crusades? Unlanded nobles wanting real estate. Northern Ireland? English conquest and occupation. Middle East? Political interventionism - British in creating Israel, and American pretty much ever since. Assigning blame to one factor over another is an exercise in speculation, not fact.

There's definitely incredible potential with the ability to engineer natural killer cells, no doubt about it. But I see a simpler and sooner available solution to HIV and other viral disease with DRACOs (altho it maybe only treatable with these in an early stage or as a 'temporary universal vaccine'). DRACOs (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers) are the class of combo ds-DNA detection protein and a programmed cell-death signal protein. The combination makes the cell's automatic suicide proce

1) Homosexuality is a sin.
2) All sexual immorality is a sin.
3) We should still devote money, time and resources to curing AIDS.
4) Hating people is also a sin. So pay attention to #3.

5) Religious nuts are still nuts, even if you find the odd Christian still barely sane enough to admit a homosexual is entitled to treatment.
6) Religious nuts think they're morally superior for rising to the level of base morality that would allow 'money, time and resources' to be spent on somebody who engaged in "sexual immorality"
7) Religious nuts can't see the irony in that even a run-of-the-mill athiest wouldn't even have to think through 1-2 & 4 before automatically thinking 3.

All cynicism aside, I think that this is an interesting article and personally approve of the use of stem cells of any kind if (and only if) it will work towards the improvement in the quality of life to people now and in the future. Call it narrow minded if it helps you to sleep at night, after all, we're all entitled to an opinion. I think that the effect this sort of breakthrough would have on the whole world (lets take a moment to consider countries where HIV and AIDS are a daily concern) far outweighs